Total in storage was 14, tonnes. Used fuel from the French reactors and from other countries is sent to Areva's La Hague plant in Normandy for reprocessing. This has the capacity to reprocess up to tonnes per year of used fuel in the UP2 and UP3 facilities, and had reprocessed 28, tonnes to the end of The treatment extracts Typical input today is 3.
The rest is preserved for later reprocessing to provide the plutonium required for the start-up of Generation IV reactors. Reprocessing is undertaken a few years after discharge, following some cooling. Some At the end of , there were 80 tonnes of civilian plutonium in storage in France, 60 t of it at La Hague. Of the total, 56 t belonged to French entities, and 27 t to EdF.
These discharges earlier amounted to about tonnes per year, but rose to tonnes from Used MOX fuel is not reprocessed at present. EdF used it in the Cruas MWe power reactors from the mids to The main RepU inventory — 24, tonnes at four sites at the end of but only 16, tonnes at the end of — constitutes a strategic resource, and EdF intends to increase its utilization significantly. The enrichment tails remain at Seversk, as the property of the enricher.
It is the reason why the cost of these operations may be higher than for natural uranium. However, taking into account the credit from recycled materials natural uranium savings , commercial grade RepU fuel is competitive and its cost is more predictable than that of fresh uranium fuel, due to uncertainty about future uranium concentrate prices. In May Framatome signed a contract to design, fabricate and supply fuel assemblies using enriched reprocessed uranium to EDF between and In Europe 35 reactors have been loaded with MOX fuel.
Contracts for MOX fuel supply were signed in with Japanese utilities. However, EdF has priority. To the end of Melox had produced about tonnes of MOX fuel.
In it produced tonnes. In addition to LWR fuel, about tonnes of gas-cooled reactor natural uranium fuel was earlier reprocessed at La Hague, and over 18, tonnes was reprocessed at the UP1 plant for such fuel at Marcoule, which closed in At the end of Areva and EdF announced a renewed agreement to reprocess and recycle EdF's used fuel to , thereby securing the future of both La Hague and Melox plants, though prices were not specified past The base terms for the period were in a agreement that increased volumes of used LWR fuel to about 1, tonnes and MOX fuel to tonnes per year.
France's back-end strategy and industrial developments are to evolve progressively in line with future needs and technological developments. The existing plants at La Hague commissioned around have been designed to operate for at least forty years, so with operational and technical improvements taking place on a continuous basis they are expected to be operating until around This will be when Generation IV plants reactors and advanced treatment facilities should come on line.
All three processes are to be assessed as they develop, and one or more will be selected for industrial-scale development with the construction of pilot plants. In the longer term the goal is to have integral recycling of uranium, plutonium and minor actinides. In practical terms, a technology — hopefully GANEX or similar — will need to be validated for industrial deployment of Gen IV fast reactors about , at which stage the present La Hague plant will be due for replacement.
Another laboratory is researching granites. Research is also being undertaken on partitioning and transmutation, and long-term surface storage of wastes following conditioning. Wastes are to be retrievable from the repository.
ANDRA publishes a waste inventory every two years and reports to government so that parliament can decide on waste policy. It reports annually. This formally declared deep geological disposal as the reference solution for high-level and long-lived radioactive wastes, and set as the target date for licensing a repository and for opening it. It also affirmed the principle of reprocessing used fuel and using recycled plutonium and uranium "in order to reduce the quantity and toxicity" of final wastes, and called for construction of a prototype fourth-generation reactor by to test transmutation of long-lived actinides.
Funds for waste management and decommissioning remain segregated but with the producers, rather than in an external fund. ANDRA is expected to lodge a construction licence application in , start construction in , and commence the pilot phase of disposal in More than half the total cost is expected to be construction, and one-quarter for operation over years. The Waste Management Act defined three main principles concerning radioactive waste and substances: reduction of the quantity and toxicity, interim storage of radioactive substances and ultimate waste, and deep geological disposal.
A central point is the creation of a national management plan defining the solutions, the goals to be achieved and the research actions to be launched to reach these goals. This plan is updated every three years and published according to the law on nuclear transparency and security. The Act was largely in line with recommendations to government from the CNE following 15 years of research.
Their report identified the clay formation at Bure as the best site, but was sceptical of partitioning and transmutation for high-level wastes, and said that used MOX fuel should be stored indefinitely as a plutonium resource for future fast neutron reactors, rather than being recycled now or treated as waste.
Wastes from transmutation reactors will be in interim storage for at least 70 years. Earlier, an international review team reported very positively on the plan by ANDRA for a deep geological repository complex in clay at Bure.
In ANDRA was authorised to build an underground research laboratory at Bure to prepare for disposal of vitrified high-level wastes HLW and long-lived intermediate-level wastes. A construction permit application is expected in , with construction from It will be designed to take 10, cubic metres of HLW, mostly vitrified from reprocessing 45, t used fuel , and 73, m 3 of long-lived ILW, of which 15, m 3 is metallic parts from spent fuel.
Only standard universal canisters will be used, and all fuel will be recycled. It opened in and benefited from the experience gained at Centre da la Manche. It is operated by an Areva subsidiary. This is 70, m 3 18, tonnes of graphite from early gas-cooled reactors and 47, m 3 of radium-bearing materials from manufacture of catalytic converters and electronic components, as well as wastes from mineral and metal processing that cannot be placed in Andra's low-level waste disposal center in Soulaines.
In response, 40 communities put themselves forward for consideration. Investigations are proceeding. A repository is likely to be in clay, about 15 metres below the land surface. EdF sets aside 0. Thirteen experimental and power reactors are being decommissioned in France, nine of them first-generation gas-cooled, graphite-moderated types, six being very similar to the UK Magnox type.
There are well-developed plans for dismantling these which have been shut down since or before and work is progressing. However, completion awaits the availability of sites for disposing of the intermediate-level wastes and the alpha-contaminated graphite from the early gas-cooled reactors. At least one of these, Marcoule G2, has been fully dismantled. A licence was issued for dismantling Brennilis in , and for Chooz A in EdF points to Chooz A as the most representative plant of those currently operating, and dismantling work on it is on schedule for completion in and on budget.
In April ASN issued a draft policy on decommissioning which proposes that French nuclear installation licensees adopt "immediate dismantling strategies" rather than safe storage followed by much later dismantling. The policy foresees broad public information in connection with the decommissioning process. This will push back the timeline by several decades. Materials arising from EdF's decommissioning will include: tonnes of long-liver intermediate-level wastes, 18, tonnes of graphite, 41, tones of short-lived intermediate-level wastes and , tonnes of very low level wastes.
The Eurodif gaseous diffusion enrichment plant at Tricastin, closed down in June , is being decommissioned from , after residual uranium was recovered from it. Organisation and financing of final decommissioning of the UP1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule was settled in , with the Atomic Energy Commission CEA taking it over. The plant was closed in after 39 years of operation, primarily for military purposes but also taking the spent fuel from EdF's early gas-cooled power reactors.
The total expected cost is periodically re-evaluated, and EDF puts aside an amount related to the total estimated cost, the actualisation cost and the expected lifetime of the plants.
In January France's Court of Audit released a report on the costs of nuclear power in the country. However, the court noted that these future costs estimates are tentative because of the lack of firm decommissioning costs and the lack of final disposal plans. A massive increase in future costs would have a "significant but limited" impact on the annual cost of electricity production, it said. In January a parliamentary committee reported: "The cost of decommissioning is likely to be greater than the provisions," the technical feasibility is "not fully assured" and the dismantling work will take "presumably more time than expected.
EdF responded that it "assumes full responsibility for the technical and financial aspects of dismantling its nuclear plants," and noted that it was currently decommissioning nine reactors, so had a good basis of experience. It also pointed out that its funds set aside for decommissioning were audited by the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea the previous month. The CEA has 14 research reactors of various types and sizes in operation, all started up to , the largest of these being the 70 MWt Osiris at Saclay, which started up in for material and fuel testing, and is now being decommissioned.
About 17 units dating from to are shut down or decommissioning. About half of these operating reactors use high-enriched fuel. Previously this had used fuel sourced from Russia. Both would have fuel recycling. It noted that China and India are aiming for high breeding ratios to produce enough plutonium to crank up a major push into fast reactors.
It was initially envisaged as a MWe prototype of a commercial series of MWe SFR reactors which were planned to be deployed from about These would consume the plutonium in used MOX fuel and utilise the half million tonnes of depleted uranium DU that France will have by Over experiments with Brayton cycle gas turbine technology driven by nitrogen were carried out with the CEA.
Four independent heat exchanger loops are likely, and it will be designed to reduce the probability and consequences of severe accidents to an extent that is not now done with FNRs. Astrid is called a 'self-generating' fast reactor rather than a breeder in order to demonstrate low net plutonium production. Astrid is designed to meet the criteria of the Generation IV International Forum in terms of safety, economy and proliferation resistance.
CEA plans to build it at Marcoule. In December it approved moving to the design phase, with a final decision on construction to be made in The six-year conceptual design was finished in The basic design phase runs to , with 14 industrial partners. The CEA is responsible for the project and will design the reactor core and fuel, but will collaborate with Areva, which would design the nuclear steam supply system, the nuclear auxiliaries and the instrumentation and control system.
Japanese partners are playing a major role since The Astrid programme includes development of the reactor itself and associated fuel cycle facilities: a dedicated MOX fuel fabrication line AFC that was planned to be built about and a pilot reprocessing plant for used Astrid fuel ATC about Fuel rods containing actinides for transmutation were scheduled to be produced from , though fuel containing minor actinides would not be loaded for transmutation in Astrid before All the dates appear to have slipped, and with a decision in , construction could start in and operation about In June the French government stated that Astrid will have its capacity scaled down from the initially planned MWe to between and MWe to reduce construction costs and also due to development of a commercial fast reactor no longer being a high priority.
Following the decision, Toshiba said that the smaller Astrid would be a step back for Japan's fast reactor development process, possibly forcing the country to build its own larger demonstration reactor in Japan rather than rely on Astrid.
In that process, minor actinides are separated out from used fuel in an advanced-technology reprocessing plant and then incorporated into blanket assemblies which are placed around the core of a future fast reactor. In homogeneous recycling, the actinides are incorporated into the actual fuel. The second line of FNR development is the gas-cooled fast reactor. A MWt experimental version — Allegro — is envisaged to be built by The secondary circuit will be pressurized water.
Further detail in Fast Neutron Reactors paper. In June the CEA signed a major framework agreement with Rosatom covering "nuclear energy development strategy, nuclear fuel cycle, development of next-generation reactors, future gas coolant reactor systems, radiation safety and nuclear material safety, prevention and emergency measures. CEA has two priorities in this area:. It says that it "is using the Antares program to make VHTR a pivotal aspect of its new product development.
The designation period covers to The ICERR program allows participating research reactors in its framework to coordinate and rationalise their offer of facilities, resources and services to interested IAEA member states. The Jules Horowitz reactor JHR with twice the neutron flux of Osiris is the first such unit to be built for several decades, and has been identified by the EU as a key infrastructure facility to support nuclear power development, as well as producing radioisotopes and irradiating silicon for high-performance electronic use.
Areva TA has designed and is building it and commissioning is expected by Shifts in these figures since the introduction of the Law on Energy Transition in remain modest. Within the relatively limited margin that France has to reduce its emissions deriving from electricity production, the amendments to the energy legislation can make a real difference as the remaining coal plants are shut down.
At the same time, France should not be content with relying on nuclear energy but continue making efforts in expanding its use of renewables.
Write to the President of France, Mr. Brune Poirson and Ms. Emmanuelle Wargon:. Given the circumstances, we also have an understanding of your choice to extend the transition period for reducing the share of nuclear energy in electricity production.
Energy Global power mix by energy source Energy Net power production in the U. Energy Solar power generation in the U. Energy Wind power generation in the U. Bruna Alves. Research expert covering energy and environment.
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